pdf searchability issues, Pages, draft
OS X supports typesetting with simple typographical features as well as with advanced typographical features. When exported to PDF 1.3 in Apple Mac OS X 10.4 and PDF 1.3 in Apple Mac OS X 10.5, only simple typographical features will be searchable. If PDF searchability is important for your purposes, you should make sure you use the following settings in Pages:
+Format > Font > Ligatures: None
+Inspector > Document: Uncheck box for Use Ligatures
+Inspector > Text: Check box for Remove Ligatures
+Character Styles: Uncheck attribute box for Advanced Font Features and make sure Ligatures is set to None.
+Format > Fonts > Show Fonts (Font Panel): Do not check any boxes in Advanced (gear wheel) > Typography
In addition, do not work with PostScript Type 1 or PostScript Type 1 Expert fonts. Searching may neither be supported before you save into PDF 1.3 nor after you save into PDF 1.3 from Apple Mac OS X 10.4 and Apple Mac OS X 10.5. No such fonts are provided with OS X or with Pages.
Good summary. I do not know if it is worth mentioning, but some of the items actually are searchable. I think the "fi" ligature is searchable for example. The snag is to know exactly which options work and which do not.
And then one might add that PDFs generated with Adobe products often are searchable, even when equivalent Mac OS X generated ones are not.
Yes. I think the idea was to cover that by the phase "simple typographical features". I suppose the ligatures with Unicode codepoints would normally be searchable.
The idea was to confine it to Pages users. Any way to use Adobe to generate pdf from .pages? Export to MS Word first? I can't test this myself.
All you need is Adobe Acrobat. I think AA Standard works but I tested only with AA Pro. When you install it, it installs an Adobe PDF printer driver.
Type your text in Pages. Go to File > Print. Select the Adobe PDF printer driver, and the generated PDF will contain searchable content.
One should mention a trap here, though. The Adobe PDF printer driver requires correct font definitions. If you type using Geneva, and then suddenly want to add a few Chinese characters, which Geneva does not contain, then Pages pretends like its raining and displays the characters regardless, using some other undisclosed font. Adobe gets upset at this and an Adobe PDF will contain some completely unsearchable crud for the Chinese characters. A Mac OS X PDF will handle this case for the lazy user, and the PDF is searchable.
To avoid the Adobe trap: always select a font that contains the characters you type.
So is there a final version of this? Or is the Draft sufficient?
Thanks,
Nubz
+Format > Font > Ligatures: None
+Inspector > Document: Uncheck box for Use Ligatures
+Inspector > Text: Check box for Remove Ligatures
+Character Styles: Uncheck attribute box for Advanced Font Features and make sure Ligatures is set to None.
+Format > Fonts > Show Fonts (Font Panel): Do not check any boxes in Advanced (gear wheel) > Typography
In addition, do not work with PostScript Type 1 or PostScript Type 1 Expert fonts. Searching may neither be supported before you save into PDF 1.3 nor after you save into PDF 1.3 from Apple Mac OS X 10.4 and Apple Mac OS X 10.5. No such fonts are provided with OS X or with Pages.
Good summary. I do not know if it is worth mentioning, but some of the items actually are searchable. I think the "fi" ligature is searchable for example. The snag is to know exactly which options work and which do not.
And then one might add that PDFs generated with Adobe products often are searchable, even when equivalent Mac OS X generated ones are not.
I do not know if it is worth mentioning, but some of the items actually are searchable. I think the "fi" ligature is searchable for example. The snag is to know exactly which options work and which do not.
Yes. I think the idea was to cover that by the phase "simple typographical features". I suppose the ligatures with Unicode codepoints would normally be searchable.
And then one might add that PDFs generated with Adobe products often are searchable, even when equivalent Mac OS X generated ones are not.
The idea was to confine it to Pages users. Any way to use Adobe to generate pdf from .pages? Export to MS Word first? I can't test this myself.
Tom Gewecke wrote:
The idea was to confine it to Pages users. Any way to use Adobe to generate pdf from .pages?
All you need is Adobe Acrobat. I think AA Standard works but I tested only with AA Pro. When you install it, it installs an Adobe PDF printer driver.
Type your text in Pages. Go to File > Print. Select the Adobe PDF printer driver, and the generated PDF will contain searchable content.
One should mention a trap here, though. The Adobe PDF printer driver requires correct font definitions. If you type using Geneva, and then suddenly want to add a few Chinese characters, which Geneva does not contain, then Pages pretends like its raining and displays the characters regardless, using some other undisclosed font. Adobe gets upset at this and an Adobe PDF will contain some completely unsearchable crud for the Chinese characters. A Mac OS X PDF will handle this case for the lazy user, and the PDF is searchable.
To avoid the Adobe trap: always select a font that contains the characters you type.
So is there a final version of this? Or is the Draft sufficient?
Thanks,
Nubz